This was the post I meant to compose this Saturday, right after I rushed the kids off to the Religious Education class kindly provided by the Catholic church.  Especially helpful since their mother is a Heathen.  As usual, we were late. But this year the teacher is nice. She never once gave me the evil eye for stomping into the classroom with my unbrushed wet hair and my youngest sipping on milk box (NOT juice box, mind you. I am a good mother) while holding a half-eaten cereal bar.  She is not like this other teacher that my oldest once had who admonished HIM and not me directly, “Your mother should really try to get you here on time every Saturday.  She should also take you to Mass every Sunday.”  And later, the same teacher caused my oldest, at the age of 6, to fear that my husband and I would be going to Hell because we are not regular church goers.

But I digress. This post is not meant to discuss the complexities of talking/teaching about religion(S) in our mixed-faith household. I can only fall into Psychotic Ranting once a week, at most.  Or, I try to ration myself.  This post is about the other joyful aspect of parenthood (fuck that. It is ALWAYS the moms that have to do this. So why bother? I am just going to use this word) Motherhood, Arts and Crafts.

If you are one of the loyal followers (Seriously, people. I love you and I worry about your mental health…) of my descent into Inferno, then you have come to learn my ineptitude in making anything with my hands and my faith in Glue Guns.  Imagine my surprise when I found a notice from the RE class, wedged into the corner of my youngest’s backpack, about some Decorating a Christmas Tree For the Zoo thing. Deadline:

TODAY! (November 7)

Are you kidding me? First response.

Cough cough. “Do you know about this thing from your Church School?”

Boy nodded.

“How come you didn’t tell mommy?”

“I did and you put it on the refrigerator!” while pointing to the incriminating evidence.

Ah. No wonder I ignored it until now….

“Uh. Right! Okay! So… Do you still want to do it?”

“Yes… If it is not too much trouble…”  complete with Puppy Eyes.

Gosh darn it! Why can’t he behave like a brat at this moment.  I hate it when they are all considerate and stuff.

Second response:

I threw every arts and crafts thing we own onto the table.  (Although I am not handy and don’t spend quality time with my children, I have hoarded a lot of arts and crafts material AND kitchen gadgets AND nice cloth napkins for when the time comes… The time when I would fulfill my destiny as Super Mom…)  What to do?  What to do? Yes, the CD craft idea!

We didn’t even have time to warm up the glue gun. Fortunately I found FOAM STICKERS!  Thank you Michaels! Although yours is a store full of crap, I am very grateful for the crap I routinely buy from you. AND….

Metallic Permanent Pens!  I have a set of 4 colors! YEEESSSS!  I brought them back from our last visit home and have forgot about them until now.

This may require some explanation: My husband and I are weird. We get excited over pens. Not the fancy Montblanc, but inexpensive, yet “fancy”, cheap chic, pens that you can find in PEN STORES in Taiwan and Japan.  Yes, people, they have stores dedicated to PENS over there. Your regular ballpoint pens. Roller ball pens. Mechanic pencils. Coloring, note-taking, highlighting pencils. Permanent markers. Jelly pens. White board pens. 0.1 mm. 0.3 mm. 0.5 mm. 0.7 mm. 1 mm. And the colors. Oh, the colors.

I spend a lot of time browsing, lusting after, choosing, and purchasing pens whenever I go home.

Because of my foresight of hoarding things which are otherwise totally useless, I was able to complete a kickass Christmas ornament in 15 minutes.

 

Even more impressive is that I was not fazed at all when I saw the fine print:

“Please make sure your ornament has a religious theme to it. NO Santa Clause or Rudolph the Reindeer please.”

I swear. I did not make this up…

I grabbed one of the metalic pens and wrote, under the Christmas Tree,

Happy Birthday Baby Jesus!

p.s. Of course, now I am looking at my masterpiece again, and wondering whether Baby Jesus would ever need gloves and snow boots (’cause that is what that red thing is. It ain’t no Stocking for what’s-his-name to put presents in!) where he grew up. It’s all desert there, eh? What with the camels and all. Tell me there are camels! Our porcelain camel is our favorite from the Lenox Nativity set that my mother-in-law gave us.  (Well, “favorite” after Baby Jesus of course…)

p.p.s. Seriously, Lenox people, are you sure there were GEESE and ROOSTERS in that manger the night baby Jesus was born?

p.p.p.s. You know what is the best part of this whole Decorating the Christmas Tree ordeal? I rushed into the classroom to give the teacher the ornament. She looked at me like I was crazy. She had forgot. All the kids screamed, “What is that? What is that?” NONE of the other kids turned in the ornament.  Heathen: 1